France: Some schools blocked as limited youth protests resume after holidays

...as the mass protests here in France resulted again in less violence than previous weekends. But it is far from over. Today, schools are back, with many school protest leaders calling for more blockages from today and tomorrow as well, despite the series of measures announced by the government a week ago aimed at heading off further disruption. A more general strike is also planned across France on Thursday. It's a crucial week, then, to see if these protests still have legs or if they will now die down. Let's cross then to talk to our reporter, Antonia Kerrigan, who joins us from outside L.M. Boucher, one of the schools which has been affected near to the centre of Paris anyway. I mean, Antonia, first of all, just bring us up to date with what the latest seems to be there. Well, we heard this morning from the French Education Minister, Édouard Geoffray, saying there was only a residual number of schools that had been affected. Well, certainly here, the Lycée Turgot in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris is one of them. Bright and early, they had set up a barricade blocking the front gates of the school with bins and barriers. And those we spoke to then... They said that they consider that the announcements made by the government last week, for instance, the promise of limiting class sizes to 28 just for one specific school year and the 4 billion being made available in loans in order to renovate. crumbling school infrastructure they said that those concessions were essential y breadcrumbs However crucially the education minister said this morning that it's not that these protests are illegitimate but he said they're illegal And as such true to his word we very soon saw police officers show up kitted out in riot gear with hel mets shields and batons to dismantle the barricade and to disperse the blockade if you will Now, of course, as you can see around me, they managed to free up the school entrance, but the students haven't necessarily entered the school building. However, over the last half hour, hour or so, we have started to see lots more students. Wondering, thinking about it, questioning whether they in fact should go in and of course as some students started to go in that made others question their choice a little further. I should say that I just spoke to two teenage boys who had said that they had planned to continue the blockade today but they've got tests. Coming up later this week, and once they'd started to see others enter the building, they started to wonder, and I think it's likely. Certainly the crowd behind me is dwindling. Not everyone's going in, but some are. And we'll have to see if this is the same effect we see across the country at those other remaining, as the Education Minister says, residual schools affected by the barricades. Yeah, in fact, just as you were talking there, we're just getting a little bit of information coming into us from the French Education Ministry, saying that in all 41 schools across the country were blocked today, which represents just 1%, in fact, of high schools across France. Just more generally, Antonia, I mean, it does come all this, doesn't it? I mean, a very key week for the protests and for the government here. Well, as you say, the government very much counted on those two weeks of half-term holiday to kill some of the momentum off the movement. They also hoped to head off continued barricades with that salvo of announcements in the half-term holidays. And indeed, a lot of the young people, although they don't seem they were convinced by those concessions, You can see that their conviction has been somewhat dampened as they've seen the movement getting smaller. Of course, as you say as well, though, we're going into Thursday. We just saw half a million people, according to organisers, march across France over the weekend against the cost of living, among other things. And we've seen a general strike called for Thursday. Now, this is not the first time that we've seen trade unions joining in solidarity with the students. But this time it's trade unions not just of the public sector, of the private sector, so there's a much larger mass of professional, of working people who are called upon to strike on Thursday. Their demands are higher salaries across the board and also for the government to revise their current budget that's going through Parliament at the moment that's aiming to make 54 billion euros in savings. We expect the students to join on Thursday in solidarity with the world of work. And we're also hearing from the Gilets Jaunes, The Yellow Vest movement have already announced... Announced on their website, nearly 400 actions in different locations across France on Thursday, which they say they plan on continuing on the 6th and 7th of November. So that's Friday, Saturday, a sort of homage or allusion to the youth culture, the 6th, 7th of the youth culture that, of course, sparked this enormous social movement that we're still seeing the dust settle on across France at the moment. Antonia, thanks very much. Antonia Kerrigan joining us from outside the Lycée Thiers there in central Paris. Thanks very much once again.